New experiment: Clocks consuming more energy are more accurate… ’cause thermodynamics

Clocks pervade our lives, from the cellular clocks inside our bodies to the atomic clocks that underlie satellite navigation. These atomic clocks can measure time accurately to within one second in billions of years. But there could be a price to pay for this accuracy, in the form of energy. Our new experiment found clocks that measure time more accurately consume more energy than their less accurate counterparts. This suggests nature imposes a fundamental energy cost for keeping time, and it may mean there’s a limit to how accurate we can make clocks. The branch of science that studies the…

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